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Contrary to your first impressions, this article is not a slamming of the global number 1 brand, Coca Cola, but rather the latest in an endless line of re-inventive advertisements from the US giant. In a seemingly shocking deviation to the normal service of the marketing department at Coca Cola (or Coke, as referred to in the USA) the company has launched a new ‘version’ of the world’s most popular soft drink - dubbed ‘Coke Zero’.

Coke Zero is nothing phenomenal, just regular coke with no sugar. What is phenomenal is that the advertising chiefs at the company have agreed to target men in this campaign, with a series of advertisements and television commercials now adorning the ever-widening gaps in regular programme schedules. Men are seen as ‘not sexy’ by advertisers who normally err on the side of semi-clothed women drooling over products in a ‘more dignified’ version of the 1950’s crassness that was car sales.

The fact that Coke are finally running down the route of following us men folk is simple - the female soft-drink market is already hugely crowded full of low calorie, low carb, low sugar alternatives from Sprite Zero to Diet Coke to 7UP Free. Men however do drink these products more and more (frankly I can’t really stand them) and Coke is recognising this.

But back to the point, which is the mention of that evil of things, ‘The 5 Year Plan’… the coke ad goes… “Great Coke taste, with Zero Sugar! So why can’t all good things in life come without downsides?!” okay, so nothing earth-shattering there…, but the British advertisement star goes on to say: “Like girlfriends, without the 5 Year Plan”… now this gets to the heart of every man’s psyche, and is a true winner for the advertisers.

This is pure genius. Let’s be honest, the advertisement itself is seriously lacking in actual aggressive masculinity but to pick up on the ‘clingy girlfriend’ bit and actually transmit it as part of a mainstream corporate branding exercise is wonderful and quite frankly the only reason I’m writing this entry!

Fact is, men hate clingy girlfriends. Pretty much all of us, myself included. Meeting a girl and starting to date and eventually committing to a relationship is fine, it’s lucid and it’s natural. What’s not natural is the recent (well, the last 10 or so years) trend of manipulative women becoming a powerful force on the male psyche. Men are today ruled completely by women who hold powerful bargaining chips such as heartbreak, sex and even friends as blackmailing tokens in the pockets of their favourite jeans. These women sink nails and ‘Property of Girlfriend’ stickers deep under the skin of their respective prey and for a global force as big as Coca Cola to come out and acknowledge it for a fleeting moment of visual media is breathtakingly refreshing (and probably more refreshing than the advertised ‘Coke Zero’).

So, now that it’s out there, let us men not live in fear! Why should there be special centres of education focusing on ‘Women’s Studies’ and not men’s?? Why is the car park at your local Dunnes Stores reserving the spaces towards the front of the store for ‘Parent and Child’ spaces, but painting graphics of a woman and a baby on the ground?? Why is it that men are completely mistrusted by the judiciary in cases of custody?? Let’s rejoice in Coca Cola’s recognition of the women who bitch about ‘him not making the first move’ when the reality of us being so terrified about the refusal of a simple acknowledging glance could lead to a fatal condition known as ‘rejectivitis’ or sinking into the ground.

diarmy

Watch the advert in full, courtesy of YouTube.com.

Things have been quiet recently on DDN, primarily due to my being completely “flat-out” for long periods of time due to work and social commitments. This leaves me in a difficult position whereby I’ve to suffer constant self-guilt for not indulging you, the viewers, in the tribulations, trials and general time-of-my-life stuff happening to me.

Some of you may know I’ve started to finally give back to society, working as a professional services employee in a global software company. Fabulous to be giving something back! Sure it means I’m left with fewer mornings in bed that when I was in college (because I so got up early every morning! NOT!) but on the whole, it’s all good.

This week (and next) I’ve been flown in style to the North Western capital of Deutschland, Düsseldorf. Shacked up in a glitzy hotel for a week has its perks, no housekeeping for a start, breakfast actually cooked for you, and plenty of German beer on tap. But Germany was a country I feared visiting for a lack of faith in myself to adapt to the language, because of the grim and grey picture of Europe’s biggest economy that is seeded in my brain. When I arrived first in Düsseldorf International Airport I was expectant of the vista beyond the sky-bridge, a distinctly “German” terminal building complete with brushed aluminium, partitioning and lots and lots of greyness.

Travelling to Neuss, a city on the other side of the Rhine from Düsseldorf, I stayed in amongst the buildings at a rather large and well-to-do industrial village. Handy for work, but detrimental for the German vision in my brain. However, that was all to change.

Last night, Düsseldorf whispered from beyond the Rhineland valley and called my Celtic name. To Neuss we went, and further to the city via tram. A festive night of merriment ensued, which involved the widespread consumption of alcoholic beverages (99% German natürlich!) and the ingestion of some of the finest Argentinean beef I’ve ever had, served upon a hot stone and warmed to perfection, complete with fully traceable bloodlines. As for the navigation, none was required, as the excellent layout of the city allowed for randomness and variety unparalleled in any country I’ve ever visited.

The best was yet to be fully realised however, as with every passing second I couldn’t help notice the fascinating array of beautiful super-model women. I normally don’t impart this stuff to you, but heterosexual thick bloody veins would not circulate my body if I were to deny the fact that German Frauen (women) are definitely among the most beautifully sculpted creatures to walk the earth. Even Americans in Germany looked well last night, with the relaxed café-bar society seeming to never fully launch into over-drive. So relaxed was it, that Morpheus never stood too far from potion’s reach.

Overall, after about 8 solid hours of beer stowing and several verses of “Ireland’s Call” and “Amhrán na bhFiann” work began to prey on my mind, and so I left the wonderful embrace of Düsseldorf’s bosom, to return for some short kip and a relaxing shower at 0800hrs CET. Gehen Deutschland! (Go Germany!)

diarmy

The World Cup of 2006 has ended after a long-fought battle between Europe’s most stylish countries. France and Italy weren’t tipped to reach the final, by any TV network’s pundits, but tonight in Berlin, the teams from Chirac & Prodi’s domains finally met to see off the end of five weeks of football.

Italy were the outside favourites entering the Olympic Stadium in Berlin, but when Zinedine Zidane pushed the newly-commissioned Adidas football past Buffon within 10 minutes, it seemed as if France were secured of victory. A set-piece corner kick a few minutes later saw Italy’s Materazzi header in the equaliser and the team in blue dominated the rest of the first half. Raymond Domoneche’s side came back after half-time and took to the driving seat comfortably. But as the clock ticked further and further towards full time, both sides showed their exhaustion.

Extra time was obvious, but what was not was the provoked attack on Marco Materazzi which saw Zinedine Zidane headbutt the Italian. Zidane saw a red card from referee Horacio Marcelo Elizondo which saw the veteran French player leave the pitch in disgrace at the last match of his career. While the match commentators were brutal in their attack on Zinedine, I felt that he had just reacted badly to an unfortunate sequence of events. Marked out of the game from the beginning, Zidane was obviously under sever pressure from all of the Italian mid-fielders. When he seemed to go down in the second half from a shoulder injury, we thought he was retiring early, but he returned to celebratory joy from the fans only to exit 30 minutes later.

Overall, it came down to penalties, and Fabien the Eccentric saw off none of the Italian attacks as Buffon prepared to put Italy into the celebration stand to accept the much-prized trophy.

For me, Italy didn’t deserve to win at this particular game. They were undoubtedly out to prove their respective clubs back home in Italy produced strong players ahead of tomorrow’s court ruling on the relegation of four of the top Italian football teams. France were the braver of the two teams launching daring attack after daring attack on the Italian goal and producing excellent defensive moves from Thuram and Abidal. As I post this, Italy are clutching the World Cup of 2006, and I’m disheartened.

diarmy

France finally overcame the venerable Portuguese side last night in a rather tense but mildly mind-numbing performance in the last of the World Cup semi-finals. France, written off by many at the start of the tournament, were favorites to win, since the awful performance Portugal put in against the English team. While I was delighted to see the English team leave the championships at the foul of Wayne Rooney - the ultimate in chavish-ness, I was not happy with Cristiano Ronaldo’s performance for the western Balearic side.

France’s post-retirement captain Zinedine Zidane was focused before the game, and even more-so when he stood before a penalty ball outside the Portuguese goal-mouth after an excellent performance from Thierry Henry after he was fouled seconds before hand. Zidane launched his attack on the Portuguese goalkeeper who looked like he’d seen a ghost in the face of the might Zinedine - Ricardo having previously said he could see the fear in the eyes of the English players in their penalty-shoot-out in the quarter finals. From two short steps, the netted ball from the French captain secured their place in the finals without a shadow of doubt - that is until the final 20 minutes of the game, where it all seemed to fall to pieces for the French defense as ball after ball was served up to the Portuguese forwards, many coming from aging football-god Luis Figo and crowd-abused Cristiano Ronaldo.

So it’s Italy V France in Berlin on Sunday, and as Bill and the Boys on RTÉ gather their thoughts on the affair, condense them into mili-second sound bytes before and after the 10 or 20 ad-breaks that will adorn the final game in Germany’s 2006 World Cup, I’ll be chanting for the country I adopted so many years ago, and fell in love with in September of 2004 when I first visited the Parisian spectacle.

Vive la France

diarmy

I know, I know, Mac OS will always win my heart and most people (if they give it a fair go) will feel the same. But with all the speil being written lately about the incumbent OS company’s latest (very late by the way) offering, I had to see for myself. So, what’s Windows Vista like, and is it the carbon copy of Mac OS GUI without the power and attention to detail that everyone is raving on about??

I started by downloading the Beta 2 release of the OS using Safari on my Mac. The ISO took all night to download - Microsoft say there’s huge demand for it so it would be slow to download, but I reckon it’s because MS couldn’t be bothered dedicating bandwidth to it. After using Toast Titanium to burn the image to a DVD (what would you do if you didn’t have a DVD writer?? Do without - another of Microsoft’s copies of Mac’s more humane distribution of OS X ‘Tiger’). Burning on a Mac, I had absolutely no problems and the ISO burned in about 4 minutes. I loaded it on a HP laptop I was loaned for the night and away I went.

The Installer: A HUGE improvement on what came before, the new installer for Windows Vista looks good - although the sickeningly slow performance from the drop-down menus to change languages holds true to Microsoft being all show and no action. The configuring of the hard-disk was a particular nicety and allowed formatting and deletion of my old Windows install through the DOS GUI. Installation took about an hour (and considering this is a powerful machine, that is VERY slow indeed. Taking off the language packs and printer drivers from a Mac OS install takes it down to about 20 - 25 minutes). The installer issued me with a “That’s all the information we need right now. Your computer will restart several times during the installation” warning/courtesy note. This is a bit ridiculous - although it’s an honesty in the Microsoft world. Mac OS doesn’t need to restart - so it’s at the very least, 2 strikes against MS Windows Vista at this count!

The Initial Impact: The initial impact among friends, and my own views included, conclude that Windows Vista is fundamentally no different from Windows XP. Although the interface is greatly altered (and completely destroyed in the process) the system still packs the same wimpy bitch-slap that XP did. In fact, XP was a big change for Microsoft and in the beginning, the GUI was its weak-point as a result of the huge strain on the processor. (Click for larger image)

The Interfaces: Vista is quite nice to use, although it is wholly incomplete. Microsoft haven’t fully realised that it will be 6 years since a new operating system came into being on IBM-compatible machines, by the time Vista is launched that is. XP was very similar to Windows 2000 and 98 before it. Vista is fundamentally Windows XP, with radically different interfaces and panels. Overall this leads to a feeling of bewilderment at where things are. Credit where it’s due, the networking facilities are hugely improved, but impossible to troubleshoot. The start menu is completely changed and all program menus are controlled from the left part of the menu. This is a poor attempt to speed up the fledgling menu item, which has plagued users over the years with its slow loading. The Aero interface, the translucent version of the GUI, is nothing short of a waste of processor power.

The Goodies: This is simple - there are none. Microsoft don’t even give a default music track! Although the traditional games have been given a facelift, the system greatly lacks associated software. Microsoft Media Centre is bundled with Vista, however it’s a far cry from Apple’s Front Row which is so simple to use that it wins hands down (even if it is a little greedy on processing power!)

The Pros: Very little here. Vista is a nice-looking OS, and in some senses, it’s an upgrade from XP. It does fall short of the mark in most areas however - lots of work to do yet!

The Cons: Where do I begin!? Firstly, Microsoft have tried to take absolutely everything about OS X 10.4 and shove it into a DOS-driven system. The result is a mildly appealing interface which is sluggish, buggy (even for Beta!) and overall completely poor at achieving it’s overall goal. Flip 3D, the way to cycle through open windows is a rip-off of OS X, as are the wallpapers, the screen-savers, the security warning pop-ups, the genie-like minimise trick, the renaming of Outlook Express to Windows Mail even stinks of rip-off.

The Verdict: Overall, this is a huge disappointment, and a bad sign of things to come for Microsoft. Last week, the Redmond-based company announced it would shelve the new WinFS file-system which was developed for Vista. WinFS’s main power-plant was the integrated indexing, which made Vista a spotlight-like system. Now that’s gone it’s hard to see how Vista will cope with the ageing NTFS system which is clunky and refuses to grant read-write access to other operating systems. Vista isn’t a Vista at all - it’s a predictable scene. If it were a physical property, it wouldn’t be granted planning permission. It’s way out of it’s depth. Instead of concentrating on usability and user-friendliness, Microsoft has gone out of it’s way to hide system properties, device properties and advanced settings for the sake of explorer-based windows. IE 7 doesn’t work (it’s in Beta also) and it’s horrendously ugly. Outlook Express - sorry, Windows Mail, is the same thing we saw in Windows 98. Media Centre looks nice, but is REALLY slow. You get the feeling that Microsoft spent more time copying as many features as they could from OS X instead of actually improving upon Windows XP. Features like live playback in Flip 3D are pointless when you’re trying to figure out why your WiFi connection isn’t working. Personally I would like a new Windows, but this one is completely useless. Don’t forget, you’ll have to buy a completely new, ludicrously powerful PC just to run Vista - so Upgrade packs probably won’t sell all that well. And of course, Vista will probably cost about €600 for the Ultimate version and Office 2007 will weigh in at about €400 and that’s without buying a PC! And, if like me you don’t trust Microsoft’s answer to anti-virus ‘Windows Defender’ you’ll pay out another €60 to have a Vista-ready anti-virus solution. When Apple release OS X 10.5 ‘Leopard’, it’ll retail for the usual €139 and offer discounts for students and families. And it’ll be WAY better and more stable than Vista. And it will run on older hardware just as well as on new stuff. People have been ranting on about Microsoft having to make an OS for multiple hardware configurations and they have it tough - if that’s the case, why are they making a radically different-but-similar operating system, instead of making the existing OS’s run better and be more functional.

The Bottom Line: Windows Vista is a waste of money. It offers NO major advantages over XP or 2000. It’s clunky, poorly built and from the Beta I tested, it’s a long way off being protected. Not to mention that you’ll end up with a whole host of brand new viruses to keep on top of.

diarmy